“Desperate” Labor misrepresenting FTTP cost, says Fifield

news Communications Minister Mitch Fifield this morning said an increasingly “desperate” Opposition was “misrepresenting” the cost of the NBN company deploying Labor’s preferred Fibre to the Premises model, in response to new documents leaked from the NBN company this morning.

This morning the Opposition distributed a set of documents which appear to have been produced by the NBN company in August last year, entitled CTO Briefing: Multi-Technology Local Fibre Network. You can download the documents in PDF format here.

According to the documents, the NBN company in mid-2015 came up with a secret plan to dramatically reduce the cost and inconvenience of deploying fibre all the way to customers’ premises.

However, Fifield said in a statement responding to the leaks that Labor had grown “more desperate by the day” as the Coalition’s Multi-Technology Mix approach to the NBN gathered pace. The Minister accused Labor of attempting to divert attention from “having no NBN policy”.

“Labor’s latest claim, that the nbn has been misrepresenting the cost of fibre to the premises, is simply outrageous,” Fifield said.

“The Government has given NBN a mandate to find the fastest and most cost-effective way to complete the network, without prescribing the technology to be used. The NBN is a $49 billion dollar infrastructure project, and Labor still doesn’t have an NBNpolicy, just a flaky promise for ‘more fibre’.”

“It’s no wonder the Australian Financial Review described Labor’s promise as “an expensive joke”. Labor was out of its depth with the NBN in government, and appears not to have done the hard yards of policy development in opposition.”

Delimiter believes that the Government’s view of the leaked documents is that they actually represent an improvement on the Fibre to the Node technology which the Government imposed on the NBN company.

The cost improvements included in the leaked documents appear to be able to be applied to either FTTP or FTTN models, as they relate to the the Local Network and Distribution Network, the aspect of the NBN company’s network responsible for getting fibre into neighbourhoods. It appears this same network could be used for either FTTN or FTTP.

The documents show that the cost of deploying this network could be brought down by $600 (from $1200) on a per-premises basis, using different fibre technology.

Despite this, the NBN company this morning stated that it maintained its projected cost on a per-premise basis for both FTTP and FTTN remained the same — $4,419 for FTTP and $2,300 for FTTN.

Separate documents released earier this week appeared to show that the NBN company was experiencing a range of delays with respect to its FTTN network rollout.

Fifield said if commentators were to look at the “facts”, they would show that the NBN company itself rejected the claim that it was at risk of not meeting its targets.

“In fact, they’ve met or exceeded every key target for 6 quarters in a row. The company is on track to meet or exceed its full year target on 2.6 million homes read for service which is great. They’re on track to meet their target on 1 million homes, this financial year, using the network. So things are tracking very well,” he said.

28 COMMENTS

“Delimiter believes that the Government’s view of the leaked documents is that they actually represent an improvement on the Fibre to the Node technology which the Government imposed on the NBN company.”

Except it explicitly states the opportunity is for FTTP, FTTB, FTTdP and only FTTN micronodes (which are required to overcome FTTN distance limitations anyway). In addition the trials were exclusively performed in FTTP areas and none in FTTN areas.

Either the government is lying about the opportunities for political reasons, or worse they have no idea what NBN is doing, and questions should be asked about DoC and the Ministers Advisors.

“Despite this, the NBN company this morning stated that it maintained its projected cost on a per-premise basis for both FTTP and FTTN remained the same — $4,419 for FTTP and $2,300 for FTTN.”

Based on the leaks from the last few weeks, we can already adjust these figures to $3600 for FTTP and $2600 for FTTN. And that’s not taking into account that FTTP figures represent past cost and not future forecast, and have been allowed to be inflated through increased Delivery Partner payments and tens of millions in guaranteed overheads being paid. In addition as we’ve seen from these trials, labelling the fastest and cheapest FSAM (3MLT-10) under Project Fox to be a “failure”. FTTP CPP is just inflated and narrative serving.

At these alleged figures, the cost of a FTTN system is going to cost 29 Billion Dollars and FTTH is going to cost 53 Billion Dollars, that’s the same story that was being told 3 years ago by Turnbull.
Turnbullstein’s Fraudband where he is attempting to breathe life into a collection of sewed together pieces of long dead technologies, was never going to fly.
It’s essentially the same strategy as John Howards super cheap Karman Seasprite helicopters where 30 year old airframes were going to be kitted out with all the modern cons not one got off the ground at a cost of over a billion dollars, which could have bought either 16 NH90’s or the current Seahawks. We then had to spend the same billion again to buy the ones we should have bought in the first place.
The whole world is being run by nut jobs, where spin and McMurdoch publicity campaigns rule.
It’s very clear that the cost of Turnbullstein’s Fraudband is approaching double his original estimates.

What is it with the constant blame being put on Labor for these leaks? The leaks are to the press from NBNCo, the press write the stories, but then you have the Libs claiming it’s Labor being desperate. Their grasp on reality seems tenuous to non-existent. Similar to a couple of posters beginning with R actually.

Just in case the Senate Committee didn’t see it coming, there will be no more commercial in confidence or take on notice excuses from the NBN during hearings. Refer above for the new excuse and addition to the drinking game.

Mr Potato Head is using spuddle speak again, does anyone believe anything the Coalition say any more, am I the only one who changes the TV channel when someone from the Coalition speaks on TV. I’m not angry any more just tuned out but I am interested in what the other parties are saying especially the independents they have little fear of the truth. Two polls now have Conservatives and Labor at 50/50, I was going to say liberals but they aren’t any more. Even Malcolm Fraser quit the liberal party because he said they didn’t represent liberal ideas any more.

“Desperate Renai misrepresenting the government’s position” should be another article on this website. His text about the government’s position is literally contradicting the quote from the minister earlier in the article!

Welcome! We were an energetic and engaged community of Australians who worked with or who were interested in technology -- all sorts of IT professionals, IT managers, CIOs, tech policy-makers and tech enthusiasts.